The Shadow of a Man

"I'm ashamed to say why I came – but I will!" cried Moya in a low voice. "I did not want you to be found out through my own brother. He suspected the man was in here – I don't know why. He was going to watch the store all night, and I was watching it for him while he changed, and the light under the door – "

Rigden held up his hand.

"Hush!" he said. "Here is your brother."

Theodore was more than decent; he was positively gorgeous in striped and tasselled silk. He stood in the doorway with expressive eyebrows and eloquent nostrils, looking from Moya to Rigden until his gaze settled upon the latter. It was almost an innocuous gaze by then.

"So it was you in here," he said. Rigden nodded. "Do you know who I was ass enough to think it was?" continued Theodore, using a word which Moya had never heard him apply to himself before, even in fun. "Has Moya told you?"

"She has."

"I saw the light," said Moya, in elliptical explanation. Theodore continued to address his host.

"I oughtn't to have interfered," he said, with a humility which was already arousing Moya's suspicions. "I should have minded my own business, Rigden, and I apologise. I'd got it into my head – I can't tell you why. Will you forgive me? And have you any more whisky?"

"I've nothing to forgive," said Rigden, sincerely enough. "But a drink we'll have; that's an excellent idea!"

But the counter was between them, and Theodore was the first to leave the store; but on the threshold he stopped, and just turned to Moya for an instant.

"By the way, you didn't see anybody else, I suppose?" said he.

There was an instant's pause. Then Moya committed her sin.

"Of course I didn't," were the words.

Theodore strolled over to the verandah. Moya waited behind as in devotion while Rigden locked that fatal door for the last time.

"You see what you've brought me to!" she hissed. "But don't think it's because I care a bit what happens to you – once I'm gone. And I hate you for it – and I always shall!"

"Thank you," he said.

And that was all.

VII

A CAVALIER

Moya went to bed like one already in a dream. She smiled when she realised what she was doing; there would be no sleep for her that night. Yet she went through with the empty form, even to putting out the light to rest her aching eyes. And in five minutes her troubles ceased for as many hours; she had passed that pitch of excitement which is another name for insomnia; she had reached the stage of sheer exhaustion, and she reaped the recompense.

Spurred feet treading gingerly nevertheless awoke her towards dawn. It was a bitter awakening. Further sleep was impossible, further rest intolerable; besides, something must be done at once. It was an ordeal to face, but sooner or later Theodore must be told, and then – good-bye! Obviously the sooner the better, since the thing was settled between the two whom it concerned; and Moya had the temperament which prefers to precipitate the absolutely inevitable; but temperament for once was not her lord. It was too hard!

Character came to the rescue. It must be done. And Moya dressed by candle-light with a craven but a resolute heart.

Meanwhile the cautious footsteps and the low voices died away; and the girl found a bare verandah, chill and silent as a vault in the twilight of early morning. A lamp was burning in the dining-room, but the chairs were pushed back, crusts left, and tea-cups half full. The teapot felt quite heavy; and Moya took a cup and a bite before going to see whether Theodore was awake. If not, she must wake him, for she could not wait. But his room was deserted; his very boots were gone; and the craven heart leapt, for all its resolution.

Moya returned to the verandah in time to see the new chum, Ives, coming at a canter through the pines. She cut him off at the barracks, where, however, he flung himself from the saddle and almost into her arms.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Bethune! Forgotten something as usual, you see!"

Hurry and worry were behind his smile. Yet Moya had the heart to detain him.

"Good morning, Mr. Ives. Where's everybody?"

"Gone mustering."

"Not my brother?"

"No; he's gone with the police."

"The police."

"You know, they've gone to follow up some tracks – "

"Oh, yes, I know!" cried Moya.

So Theodore was hand-in-glove with the enemy! Not that the police were the enemy at all; they were only his enemies; but the fact remained that Theodore was one of them. Very likely he had already made them a present of his suspicions; nothing likelier, or more fitting, than the exposure of her "lover" through her own brother's agency. It will be seen that her bitterness against one was rapidly embittering Moya's view of all and sundry. She was not original in that.

"I forgot my water-bag," the jackeroo remarked. "I shall have to gallop to catch them up."

But he was too polite to move.

"Must you catch them up?" inquired Moya, in flattering dumps: but indeed it would be deadly at the station all day, and such a day, without a soul to speak to!

"Well, they won't wait for me, because they told me what to do," said Ives on reflection.

"And what have you to do?" asked Moya, smiling.

"Go down the fence; it's easiest, you know."

"But what are you all going to do? What does this mustering mean?"

Ives determined in his own mind to blow the odds. He was not only a gentleman; he was a young man; and Miss Bethune should have all the information she wanted and he could give. Ives began to appreciate her attractions, and Rigden's good fortune, for the first time as they deserved. It would be another place after the marriage. She was a ripper when you got her to yourself.

Aloud he explained the mustering as though he had the morning to spare. It meant sweeping up all the sheep in a given paddock, either to count them out, or to shift them altogether if feed or water was failing where they were. A big job in any case, but especially so in Big Bushy, which was by far the largest paddock on Eureka; it was seven miles by seven.

"And do you generally go mustering at a night's notice?"

"No, as a rule we know about it for days before; but last night the boss – I beg your pardon – "

"What for?" said Moya. "I like to hear him called that."

And she would have liked it, she hardly knew why. But he was not her boss, and never would be.

"Thanks awfully. Well, then, the boss found a tank lower than he expected in Butcher-boy, that's the killing-sheep paddock, and it's next door to Big Bushy, which is stocked with our very best. If the tanks were low in Butcher-boy, they might be lower still in Big Bushy – "

"Why?" asked Moya, like a good Bethune.

"Oh, I don't know; only the boss seemed to think so; and of course it wouldn't do to let our best sheep bog. So we've got to shift every hoof into Westwells, where there's the best water on the run."

Moya said no more. This seemed genuine. Only she was suspicious now of every move of Rigden's; she could not help it.

"And why must you have a water-bag?" she asked, for asking's sake.

"Oh, we never go without one in this heat. The boss won't let us. So of course I went and forgot mine. I'm no good in the bush, Miss Bethune!"

"Not even at mustering?" asked sympathetic Moya.

"Why, Miss Bethune, that's the hardest thing of the lot, and it's where I'm least use. It's my sight," said the young fellow ruefully; "I'm as blind as a mole. You ought to be able to see sheep at three miles, but I can't swear to them at three hundred yards."

"That's a drawback," said Moya, looking thoughtfully at the lad.

"It is," sighed he. "Then I haven't a dog, when I do see 'em; altogether it's no sinecure for me, though they do give me the fence; and – and I'm afraid I really ought to be making a start, Miss Bethune."

The outward eye of Moya was still fixed upon him, but what it really saw was herself upon that lonely verandah all day long – waiting for the next nice development – and waiting alone.

"I have excellent eyes," she observed at length.

"To say the least!" cried her cavalier.

"I meant for practical purposes," rejoined Moya, with severity. "I'm sure that I could see sheep at three miles."

"I shouldn't wonder," said he enviously.

"And I see you have a spare horse in the yard."

"Yes, in case of accidents."

"And I know you have a lady's saddle."

"It was got for you."

Moya winced, but her desire was undiminished.

"I mean to be the accident, Mr. Ives," said she.

"And come mustering?" he cried. "And be my – my – "

"The very eyes of you," said Moya, nodding. "I shall be ready in three minutes!"

And she left him staring, and bereft of breath, but flushed as much with pleasure as with the rosy glow of the Riverina sunrise which fell upon him even as she spoke; she was on the verandah before he recovered his self-possession.

"Your horse'll be ready in two!" he bawled, and rushed to make good his word. Moya had to remind him of the water-bag after all.

First and last she had not delayed him so very long, and the red blob of a sun was but clear of the horizon when they obtained their first unimpeded view of it. This was when they looked back from the gate leading into Butcher-boy: the homestead pines still ran deep into the red, and an ink-pot would still have yielded their hue.

In Butcher-boy, which was three miles across, there was nothing for them to do but to ride after their shadows and to talk as they rode, neck and neck, along the fluted yellow ribbon miscalled a road, between tufts of sea-green saltbush and faraway clumps of trees.

"I wish I wasn't such a duffer in the bush," said Ives, resolved to make the most of the first lady he had met for months. "The rum thing is that I'm frightfully keen on the life."

"Are you really?" queried Moya, and she was interested on her own account, for what might have been.

"Honestly," said Ives, "though I begin to see it isn't the life for me. The whole thing appeals to one, somehow; getting up in the middle of the night (though it was an awful bore), running up the horses (though I can't even crack a stock-whip), and just now the station trees against the sunrise. It's so open and fresh and free, and unlike everything else; it gets at me to the core; but, of course, they don't give me my rations for that."

"Should you really like to spend all your days here?"

"No; but I shouldn't be surprised if I were to spend half my nights here for the term of my natural life! I shall come back to these paddocks in my dreams. I can't tell why, but I feel it in my bones; it's the light, the smell, the extraordinary sense of space, and all the little things as well. The dust and scuttle of the sheep when two or three are gathered together; it's really beastly, but I shall smell it and hear it till I die."

Moya glanced sidelong at her companion, and all was enthusiasm behind the dusty spectacles. There was something in this new chum after all. Moya wondered what.

"You're not going to stick to it, then?"

Ives laughed.

"I'm afraid it won't stick to me. I can't see sheep, I'm no real good with horses, and I couldn't even keep the station books; the owner said my education had been sadly neglected (one for Rugby, that was!) when he was up here the other day. It's only through Mr. Rigden's good-nature that I'm hanging on, and because – I – can't – tear myself away."

"And what do you think of doing eventually?"

"Oh, I don't know. I shall go home again, I suppose; I only came out for the voyage. After that, goodness knows; I was no real use at school either."

Insensibly the rocking-chair canter of the bush horses had lapsed into the equally easy amble which is well-nigh their one alternative; and the shadows were shortening, and the back of the neck and the ears were beginning to burn. The jackeroo was sweeping the horizon for pure inexplicable delight in its dirty greens and yellows; but had quite forgotten that he ought already to have been scouring it for sheep.

"And so the boss is good-natured, is he?" said Moya, she could not have told herself why; for she would not have admitted that it could afford her any further satisfaction to hear his praises.

"Good-natured?" cried the jackeroo. "He's all that and much more; there's not a grander or a straighter chap in Riverina, and we all swear by him; but – well, he is the boss, and let's you know it."

A masterful man; and Moya had wanted her master all these years! She asked no more questions, and they rode a space in silence, Ives glancing sidelong in his turn, and in his heart congratulating Rigden more and more.

"By Jove," he cried at last, "I think I shall have to get you to use your influence on my behalf!"

"For what?" asked Moya, wincing again.

"Another chance! They mustn't give me the sack just yet – I must be here when you come. It's the one thing we need – a lady. It's the one thing he needs to make him as nearly perfect as it's comfortable for other people for a man to be. And I simply must be here to see."

"Let's canter," said Moya. The blood came rushing to his face.

"I apologise," he cried. "It was horrid cheek of me, I know!"

Moya's reassuring smile was all kindly, and not all forced; indeed, the tears were very close to the surface, and she could not trust herself to say much.

"Not cheek at all," was what she did say, with vigour. "Only – you'll change your mind."

With that her eyes glistened for an instant; and young Ives loved her himself. But neither of them was sorry when another gate grew large above the horses' ears, with posts and wires dwindling into perspective on either side to mark the eastern frontier of Big Bushy.

VIII

THE KIND OF LIFE

"Now what do we do, Mr. Ives?"

He had shut the gate and joined her on a sandy eminence, whence Moya was seeking to prove the excellence of her eyesight at the very outset. But the paddock had not got its name for nothing; it was overrun with the sombre scrub, short and thick as lichen on a rock; and from the open spaces no sheep swam into Moya's ken.

"Turn sharp to the left, and follow the fence," replied the jackeroo.

"But I can't see a solitary sheep!"

"No, because you're looking slap into the paddock; that's the ground the others are going over, and they've already cleared it as far as we can see for the scrub. Each man takes his own line of country from this gate to the one opposite – seven miles away – and collects every hoof on the way. My line is the left-hand fence. Got to keep it in sight, and drive everything down it, and right round to the gate."

"Well, my line is yours," said Moya, smiling; and they struck off together from the track.

"It's the long way round, but we can't miss it," said Ives; "all we have to do is to hug the fence. Slightly inglorious, but I'd rather that than make a fool of myself in the middle."

"Is it so very difficult to ride straight through the bush?"

"The most difficult thing in the world. Why, only the other week – "

"I see some!"

The girl was pointing with her riding-switch, to make other use of it next instant. Her mount, a shaggy-looking roan mare, as yet imperfectly appreciated by Moya, proved unexpectedly open to persuasion, and found her gallop in a stride. Ives followed, though he could see nothing but sand and saltbush in the direction indicated. Sheep there were, however, and a fair mob of them, whose behaviour was worthy of their kind. In all docility they stood until the last instant, then broke into senseless stampede, with the horses at their stubby tails.

"Round them up," cried Ives, "but look out! That mare can turn in her own length, and will when they do!"

The warning was timely to the very second: almost simultaneously the sheep doubled, and round spun both horses as in the air. Moya jerked and swayed, but kept her seat. Ives headed the mob for the fence, and for the moment the nonsense was out of them.

"Bravo, Miss Bethune!" said he. "You'll make a better bushman than ever I should."

Moya clouded like an April sky; the instant before she had been deliciously flushed and excited. Her companion, however, was happily intent upon his sheep.

"That's the way to start," he said, "with fifty or sixty at one swoop; you can work a mob like that; it's the five or six that give the trouble. I have reason to know! There's a corner of one of the paddocks in our South Block where a few of the duffers have a meet every morning, just because there's some water they can smell across the fence; won't draw to their own water at the opposite corner of their own paddock, not they! No, there they'd stick and die of thirst if one of us wasn't sent to rout them out. It was my billet every day last week, and a tougher one I never want. One time there was less than half a dozen of 'em: think of driving five weak sheep through eight or nine miles of scrub without a dog! It would be ten miles if I followed both fences religiously; but I'm getting so that I can cut off a pretty fair corner. Yes, it's pretty hard graft, as they say up here, a day like that; but your water-bag holds nectar, while it lasts; and may your wedding-cake taste as good as the bit of browny under a pine, Miss Bethune!"

"What's browny?" asked Moya hastily.

"Raisins and baking-powder," said Ives, with a laugh; "but I've got enough for two in my pocket, so you shall sample it whenever you like. By the way, aren't you thirsty yet?"

Moya was.

"It's the dust from the sheep, which you profess to relish, Mr. Ives."

"Only because it's like no other dust," explained the connoisseur. "And water-bag water's like no other kind."

The canvas bag was wet and heavy as he detached it from the saddle and handed it to Moya after drawing the cork from the glass mouthpiece; and from the latter Moya drank as to the manner born, the moist bag shrinking visibly between her hands.

"Steady!" cried Ives, "or we shall perish of thirst before we strike the gate. Well, what do you think of it?"

"A little canvassy, but I never tasted anything cooler, or more delicious," said Moya in all sincerity, for already the sun was high, and the dry heat of it stupendous.

The jackeroo sighed as he replaced the cork after a very modest sip.

"Ah!" said he, "I wish we were taking sheep to water in the paddock I was telling you about! Long before you get to their water, you strike a covered-in tank, that is if you cut off your corner properly and hit the other fence in the right place. It's really more like a well, without much water in it, but with a rope and a bucket with a hole in it. That bucket's the thing! You fill it a bumper, but it runs out faster than it comes up, and you're lucky if you can pour a wineglassful into the crown of your hat; but that wineglassful's sweeter than the last drop from the bag; it's sweeter than honey from the honeycomb, and I shall say so all my life!"

The boy's enthusiasm was very hard on Moya. It pricked every impression deep in her heart for ever; she caught the contagion of his acute receptivity, upon which the veriest trifles stamped themselves with indelible definition; and it was the same with her. She felt that she should never quite lose the sharp sensations of this one day of real bush life, her first and her last.

Down the fence they fell in with frequent stragglers, and the mob absorbed them in its sweep; then Moya made a sortie to the right, and Ives lost sight of her through the cloud of dust in which she rode, till the beat of hoofs came back with a scuttle of trotters, and the mob was swollen by a score at least, and the thickening cloud pierced by Moya radiant with success. Her habit was powdered as with sullen gold, and the brown gold streamed in strands from her adorable head. Ives worshipped her across the yellow gulf between their horses.

"Where's the dog?" she asked. "I'm certain that I heard one barking."

He turned his head and she heard it again, while the lagging rearguard broke into a run.

"Yet you say you are no bushman!" remonstrated Moya. "No wonder you can do without a four-wheeled dog!"

"It's my one worthy accomplishment," said the barker, modestly; "picked it up in that other paddock; simply dumb with it, sometimes, when I strike the covered-in well I was telling you about. But here we are at the corner; there's a seven-mile fence to travel now, and then as much again as we've done already. Sure you can stand it, Miss Bethune?"

"Is there any water on the way, if we run short?" queried Moya.

Ives considered.

"Well, there's an abandoned whim in the far corner, at the end of this fence; the hut's a ruin, but the four-hundred-gallon tank belonging to it was left good for the sake of anybody who might turn up thirsty. Of course it may be empty, but we'll see."

"We'll chance it, Mr. Ives, and have another drink now!"

For it was nearing noon, and beyond the reek of the travelling mob, now some couple of hundred strong, the lower air quivered as though molten metal lay cooling in the sand. Moya had long since peeled off her riding gloves, and already the backs of her hands were dreadfully inflamed. But the day would be her first and last in the real bush; she would see it through. She never felt inclined to turn back but once, and that was when a sheep fell gasping by the way, its eyes glazed and the rattle in its neck. Moya insisted on the remnant of water being poured down its throat and the tears were on her cheeks when they rounded up the mob once more, leaving a carcass behind them after all, and the blue crows settling on the fence.

Otherwise the seven miles were uneventful travelling; for even Moya's eyes discerned few more sheep on their side of the wires; and beyond these, to the left, was the long and ragged edge of a forest so dense (though low) that Moya, riding with Ives at the tail of the mob, said it was no wonder there were no sheep at all on the other side.

"Oh, but that's not Eureka over there," explained Ives; "that's the worst bit of country in the whole of Riverina. No one will take it up; it's simply fenced in by the fences of the blocks all round."

Moya asked what it was called. The name seemed familiar to her. It was Blind Man's Block.

"Ah! I know," she said presently, suppressing a sigh. "I heard them speaking of it on the verandah last night."

"Yes, Spicer was advising your brother to sample it if he wanted an adventure; but don't you let him, Miss Bethune. I wouldn't lose sight of the fence in Blind Man's Block for all I'm ever likely to be worth: there was a man's skeleton found there just before I came, and goodness knows how many there are that never will be found. Aha! there's the whim at last. I'm jolly glad!"

"So am I," said Moya, with a little shudder; and she fixed her eyes upon some bold black timbers that cut the sky like a scaffold a mile or two ahead; yet more than once her eyes returned to the line of dingy scrub across the fence to the left, as if fascinated by its sinister repute.

"We must bustle them along, by Jove!" exclaimed Ives, and he yelped and barked with immediate effect. "You can't do more than a couple of miles an hour with sheep; and at that rate we shan't be at the gate much before three o'clock; for I see that it's already close upon one."

"But how do you see it?" asked Moya curiously. "I've never seen you look at a watch."

Ives smiled, for he had led up to the question, and was about to show off in yet another branch of the bushman's craft which even he had succeeded in mastering.

"The fences are my watch," said he; "they happen to run due east and west and north and south on this station. This one is north and south. So at noon the shadows of the posts lie exactly under the wires: put your head between 'em, and when the bottom wire bisects the shadow it's as near noon as you would make it with a quadrant and sextant. The rest comes by practice. Another dodge is to put a stick plumb in the ground and watch when the shadow is shortest; that's your meridian."

"Yet you say you are no good in the bush!"

"I have two of the unnecessary qualifications, Miss Bethune, and I've taken care to let you see them both," laughed the open youth. "My only other merit as a bushman is a good rule which I am sorry to say I've broken through talking to you. I always have my lunch at twelve under the biggest tree in sight. And I think we shall find something in that pine-ridge within a cooee on the right."